


Dissolution

by afterandalasia



Category: Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (2017)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Deterioration, Gen, Loss of Identity, Mental Breakdown, POV Russell Van Pelt, POV Second Person, Pre-Canon, Russell Van Pelt is Not an NPC, Unhappy Ending, Video Game Mechanics, Villains, sucked into a video game
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-22
Updated: 2018-12-22
Packaged: 2019-09-25 01:43:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,481
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17112074
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/afterandalasia/pseuds/afterandalasia
Summary: There used to be a name.There used to be somewhere else.There used to beyou.





	Dissolution

**Author's Note:**

> I have many things which I should be doing and/or writing. Instead I watched the new Jumanji twice in one day and got distracted by a plot bunny.

Your name is Lee. You awake to a world gone dark on the left side and a throbbing in your head for something that you can’t even name. Your hand wants to curl around something which is not there, there is the taste of blood in your mouth, and uncontrollable shivers are still running through you.

The jungle is dark and hot and wet, and the buzzing of the insects matches the buzzing in your head. Glassy strangers’ eyes turn towards you, and you don’t even know how you _got_ here.

You were just on your bed, controller in your hand. Watching the screen flicker. Jogging bottoms and an oversized tee, hair still mussed with sleep, yawning awake. And suddenly this nightmare came alive around you.

 

 

 

Your name is Lee. They call you Russell Van Pelt and tell you that they will retrieve the jewel for you, and yes, you remember the jewel, you remember it pulsing warm in your hand, green and opalescent and warm to the touch. But you have never held such a jewel, and the memory of it is like a knife cutting through your thoughts because _it is not your memory_.

They say this is the land of Jumanji, but that was just the name of the video game, nothing more. It is not a real place, not a real country. Just made-up sounds for a made-up place.

They say you must get back the jewel.

You go into one of the tents and stare at the face in the mirror and it is not your face at all but it wears your look of horror all the same. A rough-stubbled jaw and one good eye, some long brown coat unlike anything you have ever worn or would ever wear. You take it off, and as soon as you blink it has appeared back on you once again.

 

 

 

Your name is Lee. You turn your back on this weird camp and _walk_ , because if this is a dream then maybe walking away will make you wake up. You just want to _wake up_ , to see your mother again, to thank her for breakfast instead of mumbling something incoherent and seeing her smile fade because of it, to hug her. Because you are clearly having a nightmare, that is the only explanation for this.

So you walk.

You barely have time to see the movement in the bushes before there is a flash of pain and claws in your chest and a scream ripping from your throat as everything goes black.

 

 

 

Your name is Lee. Dreaming that you were killed by a jaguar does not release you from the dream, but it must be a dream, it _must be_ , because otherwise how could you still be alive? The only thing that even hurts is your wrist, some sort of silvery rectangle inked there.

You walk again, this time in a different direction. You hear the snarls of a jaguar in the distance but they do not come, not this time, and you think that maybe you are on to a way out of this dream.

Then the river bursts into life, and your scream becomes a cry of rage as the crocodile’s teeth slice into you.

 

 

 

Your name is Lee, your name is _Lee_ , no matter how many times the people at the camp call you Professor Russell Van Pelt and swear to help you get the crystal back.

Jumanji has a thousand ways to die. Each time, the searing in your wrist and the tightening in your head gets worse, until there is barely enough room in your head behind the pain, the pain, _the pain_. You have died a thousand deaths and cannot escape this cursed place.

 

 

 

Your name is Lee. They tell you – someone tells you, you are not sure who it is – that you can control the animals of Jumanji. That Van Pelt can control the animals of Jumanji. You are not sure how this can be, and yet you have died so many times.

The next time that a hippo rears its mighty head and opens its gaping maws, you tell it to _stop_. And the words do not leave your lips, and they are not in your voice, they are in Van Pelt’s voice, but it was you who said them all the same.

 

 

Your name is Lee. There is no end to Jumanji, just forest beyond forest which twists and turns around on its, and you walk and walk until your legs ache and your visions blur and still there is nothing but forest.

Your men walk until they drop dead, then shimmer out of existence only to fall from the sky anew. The first time that it happened, you screamed. There’s no points in screaming now, though; it’s not like it changes anything.

 

 

 

Slowly but surely, it becomes clear that the crystal is your only way out. You don’t sleep, but it’s like you still dream, flashes of memory of a green stone.

Birds land on your arms, and they might be vultures rather than songbirds but it is alright, alright enough. But the snakes that follow your steps and the scorpions that climb over your knuckles with their creeping, creeping steps… those would have made your skin crawl, before.

But it isn’t your skin. You feel it, you wear it, but it is not yours.

Surely.

 

 

 

Your name is…

Lee, that is it. Your name is Lee.

Why bother thinking of Van Pelt’s body as Van Pelt’s? It is yours now, after all. Yours to wear, yours to use, yours to hurt. When sharp-thorned vines slice into your skin, it is Van Pelt’s blood which spills, but it might as well be yours.

(Did Van Pelt ever exist? Was he here, before you came here, or did he come into being to hold you? If he never existed before, how can be he anything but another body for you with a different name?)

You search for the man called Nigel Billingsley. You know that it is Nigel who has the stone, you remembers it, even if it never happened.

Just find the stone, and you can leave.

Just find the stone, and you can win.

Just find the stone.

 

 

 

Just find the stone.

 

 

 

Your name is Professor Russell Van Pelt. That’s all that anybody ever calls you, so it must be your name. You think there might have been something else that people called you once, but it doesn’t matter.

Nothing else matters but the stone.

If you get the stone then you can _do something_ , definitely _something_ , you can’t remember what it is but if you get the stone then you will know, you are sure that you will know.

There are more characters that try to stop you, but they are all part of the game. It has all been part of the game. You are the only thing here, you are the only thing that has ever been here.

Nothing else is real, not even death. You know you have been waiting for these characters to come, but you cannot remember how long.

 

 

 

Your name is Professor Russell Van Pelt. You fight and you fight, and you try and you try, and you _see_ the shine of the stone and for a moment the vision in your left eye returns in sharp green lines that cut into your brain. It hurts it hurts _it hurts_ and the closer the crystal gets the more the pain is there but you know that you need it, you have to have it, it is the only thing you have wanted for _so long now_ and your only chance for something that you can’t even remember.

So you fight them.

But they break the rules, _they break the rules_ , the rules are everything in Jumanji and the animals and the people and everyone abide by them. You learned them over time, you learned them so that you could stop dying, stop feeling those supernovas of pain, but these new figures break the rules and it traps a scream in your throat because you remember breaking rules, or trying to. It’s like they’re thinking in circles when the world has been nothing but straight lines for…

For…

You can’t remember how long any more.

There used to be a name.

There used to be somewhere else.

There used to be _you_.

Your wrist stabs with pain, cold streaking down the bones of your arm, and you look to see the silver turn to black as the crystal slots back in to the Jaguar’s brow. Then it fades, dissolves away, and you feel the tug in your gut first before the pain starts.

After all the deaths and all the lives, after all the fighting, you realise in the last burning seconds that you have lost.

And the game is over.


End file.
